Tarnished Silver
by Seishuku Skuld
Summary: Canon alternate universe, spoilers for Drama CD Side Red. The story of Sol and Ky, and the aftermath of the Battle of Rome.


Tarnished Silver  
  
By Seishuku Skuld (skuldhotohori@yahoo.com)  
  
Series: Guilty Gear  
  
Warnings: Alternate universe, spoilers, deathfic  
  
Author's notes: Spoilers for Drama CD Side Red. Please do not read if you are not familiar with its storyline. The translation can be found in the Projects section of The Gear Project: http://www.thegearproject.org/projects/index.html  
  
Special thanks to Edward Chang.   
  
Disclaimers: Guilty Gear belongs to Arc Systems, Sammy Studios, and is the conception of Daisuke Ishiwatari.  
  
*~*~*~*~*  
  
The wind had died by the end of the day, a stilling of the sudden howl, a quieting of the twisting screams as the gale settled to a slow breeze. The smell of death was still in the air, the coppery fragrance of blood and dirt, the acid wrench of burning flesh hanging heavy about his nostrils, every breath a constant reminder of the battle that had ensued not hours before.   
  
A retreat had been called, his forces on its last legs. Crushed and defeated, the men were gathering what little courage and dignity they had left and were running for safer ground to regroup. He'd gone out alone as usual, to find the leader of that little army – a lone knight braving enemy forces to protect the king. It had been a battle they were sure to lose from the very beginning. They had all gone into the fight knowing that, and some small part of him, though scornful, admired that greatly.   
  
Reinforcements had come hours too late. Though most of the enemy's army had been destroyed, their own forces had paid a generous price. It was not too high, however, for no one placed too much value on his own life in the midst of war, and the sprawling city they had been trying to protect still stood. Though they could not see the sprawling dome of St. Peters or its great courtyard, the memory of it was burned into their minds. As long as the Cathedral still stood, the city still stood; then hope was alive, despite the dead bodies that littered the battlefield. The soldiers of the Holy Order had willingly laid down their lives for Rome and were rewarded only in the enduring memories of their comrades. But that was enough, and those who had not died in the midst of bloodcurdling screams or writhing in the throes of agony, had bled out their lives with smiles on their faces.   
  
The corpse of the boy in his arms was already going cold, the large splotches of blood on the once-white, once-spotless uniform already drying up, the life long since faded away. His beauty had been marred by long, angry gashes on either side of his face, swipes from a claw probably, or from the spikes of a tail. His eyes were now closed, crusty with dried tears, the eyelids smeared with blood from a deep cut at the hairline. They had been beautiful when he had still worn them with that deadly determination, those sky blue eyes flashing between the figures of his attackers, azure irises crying with ferocity. But they were now still, muddied pools, bereft of the life once possessing them. The marks on his face too were now dead, no longer dripping droplets of scarlet rain. They had long since dried and stopped their bleeding. The golden hair, once dazzlingly bright in the sun was matted with ichor, black from that of his enemies and red from his own. It too, hung limp and lifeless.   
  
He was quick in his retreat, the breath coming in harsh pants and gasps from his mouth as he ran, listening to the dull pounding of his feet against the ground. Everything was either dead or dying as he ran past, hearing the occasional moan from a fallen soldier, a bloodied, muddy hand reaching for him as he passed. He turned his head occasionally, noting the names, his eyes full of pity. If they were not strong enough to stand up and run, they were not worth saving. The hospitals were for those who still had the hope to live, not for those who hoped to die. The infirmaries were full, each doctor and nurse working overtime, stretched to the limit. The wait was hours for even someone with slight medical knowledge to tend to an injury, and for those still lying on the battleground, it was too little too late.   
  
"Sorry," his eyes seemed to say as he passed yet another fallen solider, "but you're not going to make it, are you?"   
  
And those eyes would answer him, drifting to the body he had clasped in his arms.   
  
"No," came the answer, filled with sadness at the limp blond hair, swaying in time with his strides like wheat in a breeze, "not if he didn't." And usually by the end of that, it was over.   
  
His footsteps squelched in the mud, a mix of the rain from earlier in the day and the fresh blood. Most of it had stopped flowing, and now it was gathered in pools about the cadavers. That too would quickly dry up and be long gone when the clean-up crews from both sides would come in months later, clear up the stench and drive the flies away.   
  
At least there were still some things eager for battle, he thought grimly. There were the flies, always awaiting their feast. War was ugly that way, the way the insects swarmed in clouds of humming darkness, a fitting epilogue to every battle. But they would not claim the corpse in his arms; not today. He had to bring it back, because he had been the only one to witness those liquid, sea-colored eyes turn the unfathomable color of the night.  
  
How long had the boy been lying there in the dirt and the bloodstained grass, his enemy lying dead next to him, waiting for sleep to come? He had always carried himself with the air of an adult, a figurehead of authority, stability, and hope. We are going to win this war, the child had said in countless speeches, his voice as steady and as powerful as a man's, overcoming the restlessness of his audience. We will win, he had said, because we have to. He had not been filled with the boundless idealism of his youngest soldiers (still they were older than he), he had known the seriousness of the situation, and yet still with the most arousing willpower, he had led his own little army and filled them with his dream.   
  
He looked childlike in death, his features, tarnished by the fury of battle, quieted not so long ago as he breathed his last breath, and bequeathed his last words to a rival, or rather, a reluctant friend.   
  
"I came to get you," he had when he had finally found the tiny blood-spattered figure, his heart leaping into his throat as he rushed forward to his fallen leader. He had thought for a brief second, that perhaps it had already been too late, but the telltale breath and the soft, sardonic reply confirmed that the boy had not been dead at the very least, though it was quickly stealing upon him.  
  
"Always late…you could never fix that…"  
  
The child's breathing had been labored and filled with unspoken pain. The boy had never complained about that, never shared his suffering with another. What was the use after all, when the next person was in as much agony as you?   
  
"You…"  
  
He'd dealt with those in pain before, on the verge of oblivion but still clinging to him without a hope, afraid of the blackness about to overwhelm them. "It hurts," they would whisper, as if saying it would somehow make it better. "It hurts so much." And he would say nothing to them, for words would never be able to reach them in that stage, and he would hold them in his arms, men and women who had never been friendly to him before, but somehow brought close to him by the moment of their deaths. They would grasp onto his uniform with fingers twisted in the cloth, their eyes unseeing, yet somehow still boring into his own, and there they would lie, sometimes for seconds or even minutes, fighting against the shadow of death. And then he put them down, when it was over and their grip went slack. He would untangle himself from their mess, and continue on.  
  
But the boy had not said those words, had not even uttered a word of it, but instead had settled on something closer to death. "Even in the end…" he had said, grasping him with those same longing hands, "I couldn't beat you." It had been a statement of resignation. The next time would never come. And he had told the child that no, tomorrow would come. The next day would come quickly, followed by the next and the next. He too had known the child was going to die, yet there had been some strange part of him that wanted to tell the boy the contrary.   
  
But the boy had refused to believe such words. "If it's you…" he had whispered, his voice nearly lost in the howl of the winds, "you can do it." And with those eyes, so rapidly losing their focus, so quickly falling away; those eyes had believed the words, and willed them to happen. They were filled with things unspoken, a wistful longing, the desire for life entwined with the acceptance of imminent death. In that moment, at the thin barrier between the living and the dying, two pairs of eyes had met, one golden like the sun, the other, rapidly fading light, and everything and anything had become possible. "Please…" And that was all that needed to be said, because suddenly all the hope and joys of the tiny child, the gangly but sturdily devout and determined youth had been transferred.   
  
Though he had not answered the boy's request with anything but denial, the wish had been granted, and the child had died in peace, a content smile on his face. Then the muscles had relaxed, and had it not been for the deep wound in his chest and the blood covering his hands, he would have believed the blond might simply be dreaming.   
  
He willed it to be that way now, to imagine carrying the boy in his slumber, like some tender parent carrying a sleepy child to bed. But he couldn't bring himself to believe it. There was too much dried blood, and the body was already much too cold for that to be true. He'd lost the innocence of fantasy long ago. He'd exchanged it for the cruel, hard truth, less flimsy and more dependable, and though it hurt him every moment of the day, it was better than the fragile things such as dreams.   
  
A hush fell over the main camp as the soldiers saw him approaching. They met his eyes first, roving his face for signs of any expression at all before settling on the body in his arms. There their eyes widened, some mouths opening soundlessly, some already breaking into despaired weeping. The way to the center of the camp parted before him, like legendary Moses parting the Red Sea, and even those from the far reaches of the encampment came running out of their tents to peer curiously at his passing.   
  
It was like a morbid parade, an ocean of faces staring at him and the corpse in his arms. He walked stoically through them, willing himself to be untouched by the cries of disbelief and the sound of grown men sobbing. It was in front of the General's tent that he lay the body down, in a patch of grass doggedly growing amongst a land nearly dead and desolate. Perhaps this bit of grass had been growing just for him.   
  
Sol Badguy bent down on his knees, depositing the recently departed Ky Kiske on the ground gently, as if a slight jostle might wake the slumbering prince. The General looked him over approvingly, though not without the despair that was reflected in his own soldiers' eyes.  
  
Sol turned and stood, perhaps to say something, perhaps to make a speech of some sort. There was no doubt, he saw, the men and women all looked at him with admiration in their eyes, through bloodstained glasses, as if he were some god of the battlefield. No, he was not, he was merely an unwilling messenger, bringing home the corpse of their savior, a harbinger of their doom in the years to come.  
  
He looked down at the boy for some sort of inspiration, a word to start the fire, though he had never been good with speaking. Dusk was settling into night, the pink sky changing into a glorious midnight blue. He was surprised, as the sun took its last rays below the horizon, that the flaxen strands of hair had managed to catch the fading twilight, and seemed to hold as a token of the future, one small glimmer of golden light.  
  
~~the end 


End file.
